‘Ladybirds’ Requiem’, a Tale of Facing Fears

What becomes of our phobias, nightmares, the fears that punctuate our childhoods and that seem to fade over the years? They remain in a corner of our mind and sometimes resurface, generating a certain feeling of nostalgia. This is the subject around which Japanese artist Akino Kondoh created the animated film Ladybirds’ Requiem (2006), presented as part of the YouTube Play biennial at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Born in Chiba in 1980, Akino Kondoh graduated from Tama Art University. The artist, who has been living in New York since 2008, produces a multifaceted body of work comprising animations, manga, drawings, and paintings.

Phantasmagorical and introspective

Ladybirds’ Requiem is an animation lasting five minutes and 38 seconds and encourages the viewer to take a different look at recurring childhood nightmares, at these images symbolic of fear, some of which are a product of our imagination. In the video, in which music plays a central role, the vision of Akino Kondoh’s world is dreamlike. The story starts with a scene in which a young girl accidentally kills two ladybirds. This traumatic incident draws her into a world where a button on her blouse transforms into a ladybird. Thus, to allay her guilt and fear, she starts sewing hundreds of buttons to the inside of her skirt.

The main character in the film multiplies as the scenes go by, navigating between different environments. This reference to ladybirds is taken from one of the artist’s own nightmares in which a ladybird fell out of her hand and was crushed by a car.

Here, the ladybird is an allegory for memories and the bigger trials life has in store, particularly those unique to women with regard to physical changes, sensations linked to those moments when humans and nature combine to form a harmonious whole. Curiosity is linked to the unknown, to what scares us, but as we advance through life, we are pushed to overcome these barriers.

Another of the artist’s creations, the manga Insects in Me, published in 2009, is a series of eight stories linked by the intermingling of dreams and reality, with the absurd running through them, that reprises themes that Akino Kondoh holds dear.

Ladybirds’ Requiem (2005-2006) is a video by Akino Kondoh, and a clip is available on her YouTube channel.